How to dig a hole

(aka dig stick)

I spent three months living in the desert and there I learned my most important life skill yet, how to dig a hole.

Firstly there are some things you must know…
- Shovels are for fools.
- You dig better when you don’t shower.
- Rocks are hard.

Once you’ve let that sink in, go find a tree with a straight branch (about an inch or two in diameter) and chop it down.

If you fall out of the tree while sawing that’s even better. We are all so comatose. The overwhelming amount of decisions we usually have in front of us makes us indifferent. Sometimes a fall in the middle of nowhere with a blade in your hands is what you need to shock you out of it.

Now plant your feet on the ground and revel in the glory of your stick.
You can choose how much bark you’d like to remove. A smooth digging stick can be pretty, but also slippery. Or maybe you enjoy a few splinters to remind your hands that they’re steady and working.

Now…pat and swing your baseball bat.
Stab your enemy.
Yell into your microphone.
Lean on your cane.
Then sharpen one end of the stick, or both if it helps you feel badass.

Now you are ready to dig, or not dig, or dig half-assedly. If you choose either of the latter two you should hurl your stick as far as possible and restart this process. There is no shame in it. It takes time for your brain to understand the simplicity of survival away from society, and you probably need to go fall out of a few more trees before you are ready.

Once you’ve found the approximate location that you’d like to dig, get on the ground. Maybe make some dirt angels, or pee a bit to christen the spot.

While sitting on your knees grasp the stick firmly with both your hands about midway down (although you’ll learn more about your own personal placement preferences as you go). You need to start getting in touch with your inner barbarian, or what some may call an expert hole digger.

Roar or bite the stick, you animal!

NOW DIG

Stab and scrape the earth as though it were the parts of yourself that you hate the most. The first layer usually moves away easily, but as you get a bit deeper you’ll look down and see how little progress you’ve made.

Yell some more.

Smear your body with the innards of your measly hole, saturating your sweat with dirt. You don’t hate yourself because you don’t look like a certain Instagram model or because you don’t make enough money, you now hate yourself because you suck at digging holes.

But this is a much more solvable problem, the more you dig the better you become. If one spot seems too harsh, move to the next. Any spot is diggable if you try hard enough (unless it’s a rock, because as I mentioned in the beginning, rocks are hard).

As you grab the excess dirt with your hands, you’ll feel the rocks peel away your skin. You’ve left little crumbs of yourself in the earth.

Now check the depth.
You’ll know it’s deep enough when it’s deep enough.
Will the fire leap out?
Will my poop run away?
Keep digging.
Do it 1000x more.
Maybe even a million, and then your hole is done.

And in less than 24 hours you’ll fill in this hole and repeat in a new location.
No one will ever know you spent so much time on the hole.
But maybe they’ll notice your blossoming biceps.
You may be a barbarian, but now you’re a hot hole digging one.

As the day’s pass and your hole count rises you will feel your expertise grow, but the earth will still throw you curve balls. In a sandy area you may initially breathe a sigh of relief as your first thwack removes a large chunk of sand. But often below the sand is clay, which you’ll dig at furiously with little to show for your progress. And now the earth doesn’t feel like your friend, it feels like it’s laughing at you.

But the magic of this experience is that it’s uncomfortable.

And now you can’t escape to your squishy bed or sofa to ease your frustrations.

Your bed is the earth. Your toilet is the earth. Your kitchen is the earth. And to use it you have to dig, or risk forever living on the surface, never going deeper. Living dangerously and cowardly.

So you should persevere and keep digging. Keep digging until water flows up into the hole and you can see your reflection in the droplets.

Dig a hole until you find yourself.

By LilaK

Listen to it on Sound Cloud